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Legislatures are ubiquitous in the American political experience. First created in Virginia in 1619, they have existed continuously ever since. Indeed, they were established in even the most unlikely of places, notably in sparsely populated frontier settlements, and functioned as the focal point of every governing system devised. Despite the ubiquity of state legislatures, we know remarkably little about how Americans have viewed them as organizations, in terms of their structures, rules, and procedures. But with the rise of modern public opinion surveys in the twentieth century, we now have extensive data on how Americans have gauged legislative performance throughout the many years. That said, the responses to the questions pollsters typically pose reflect partisanship, policy, and personality. Generally, respondents respond favorably to legislatures controlled by their own political party and those in power during good economic times. Incumbent lawmakers get ratings boosts from having personalities, “home styles” that mesh with those of their constituents. These relationships are important indicators of people's thoughts regarding the current performance of their legislatures and legislators, but they tell us nothing about attitudes toward the institution and its organizational characteristics. This study offers a unique perspective on what American voters have historically thought about legislatures as organizations and legislators as representatives. Rather than focusing on responses to surveys that ask respondents how they rate the current performance of lawmakers and legislatures, this study leverages the most significant difference between national and state politics: the existence of ballot propositions in the latter. At the national level Americans have never had any say over Congress's structure, rules, or procedures. In contrast, at the state level they have had ample opportunities over the course of more than two centuries to shape their state legislatures. The data examined here look at how people have voted on more than 1,500 state ballot propositions targeting a wide array of legislative organizational and parliamentary features. By linking the votes on these measures with the public debates preceding them, this study documents not only how American viewed various aspects of their legislatures, but also whether their opinions held constant or shifted over time. The findings reported paint a more nuanced picture of Americans'attitudes toward legislatures than the prevailing one derived from survey research. When presented with legislative reform measures on which concrete choices were offered and decisions on them had to be made, the analyses presented here reveal that, counter to the conventional wisdom that people loved their representatives but hated the legislature, voters usually took charitable positions toward the institution while harboring skeptical attitudes about lawmakers'motives and behaviors.

This open access book shows how the #MeToo movement and revelations of sexual harassment and bullying have spurred on reform of the parliamentary workplace in four Westminster countries – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. Long-standing conventions included extreme power imbalances between parliamentarians and staff and a lack of professionalised employment practices. Codes of conduct and independent complaints bodies were resisted on grounds of parliamentary privilege: the ballot box was supposedly the best means of holding parliamentarians accountable for their conduct. The taken-for-granted status of adversarial politics and its silencing effects also rendered gendered mistreatment invisible. The authors examine the institutional backdrop and the different trajectories of reform in the four countries, with most detail on the dramatic developments in Australia after angry women marched on parliament houses in 2021. They show how the different parliaments have responded to escalating evidence of misconduct, the role of policy borrowing, and the possibilities of lasting institutional change.

Democracy faces stern tests around the world in the twenty-first century. Democratic Design argues that to respond effectively and creatively, democrats need to work with a versatile new toolkit of concepts and institutions. The book assembles this toolkit — the democratic design framework — through an original blend of design thinking and democratic theory and practice. It shows how to use the framework to renew and enliven our ideas of democracy across a range of contexts. The book explores a wide range of institutions, from the familiar (such as parliamentary procedures) to the innovative (such as citizens'assemblies). It underlines the importance of systemic and contextual design, and the practical enactment of democratic values such as equality, freedom and participation. Democratic Design shows how a comprehensive approach to rethinking the present and future of democratic governance is possible, indeed essential. It draws together, and moves beyond, the best of existing theories and models by devising a new framework that is both practical and theoretically robust.

L'espoir que les élections de 2006 ont suscité dans l'imaginaire congolais aura été de courte durée. Les progrès démocratiques apparents cachent l'énorme fossé qui se creuse jour après jour entre électeurs et élus, laissant la place à une déception populaire qui discrédite les institutions issues des consultations électorales. Malgré la participation massive de l'électorat aux scrutins présidentiel et législatif de 2011, le constat de déconnexion du peuple congolais d'avec ses représentants valide l'hypothèse d'escroquerie du souverain primaire. En dépit de l'indépendance institutionnelle dont jouit l'Assemblée nationale, le contrôle parlementaire apparaît comme une pièce de théâtre durant toute la législature 2011-2018.

This book contains collection of articles which provide policy implications related to the problem of achieving substantive reform on the basis of harmonising legislation in Western Balkan (WB) countries with the standards of the European Union (EU). While WB states have generally been successful in adopting legal reforms that make up a part of EU conditionality, many laws remain unenforced, amounting to'empty shells.'In the space between law, as it is written, and practices as they are engaged in everyday life, exists a gap, characterized by informality, clientelism, and exchange often based on strong tie relationships. Some instances of informality undermine the goal of establishing rule law and contribute to corruption. Others offer valuable solutions to persistent social problems or represent traditional vehicles of social cohesion that should be promoted. The recommendations in this book seek to address both constructive and damaging instances of informality, and to identify policy measures that can help to harmonise not only legislation, but existing informal practices on the ground.

Originally published in 1973, the chapters in this volume tackle a wide range of problems arising from this process of modernization. The first section looks at the discussion of ideas and theories about administration in the nineteenth century, when some organizational ideology became firmly-rooted and went unquestioned for many years. These chapters also examine the inevitable questions of reform and major reorganization which later arose in the United States, Britain and elsewhere.The second section moves on from the theory and practice of administrative structures to some consideration of practical problems within organizations, problems of personnel and administrative method. Management questions of staff conditions and careers and job differentiation are examined, and the Fulton report on reform in such areas is discussed.The final group of chapters looks at a variety of substantive issues such as defence and civil-military relations, the advent of independence from colonial government, development policies and development administration. Two major themes emerge. One concerns the extent to which administrative organizations are instruments to be used or institutions which exercise an almost autonomous control over our lives; to what extent is public policy translated into real terms by the institutions concerned? The second theme is concerned with the impact of institution on people, both in terms of broad policy and programmes and in practical, day-to-day communication across the counter between rank-and-file bureaucrat and the ordinary citizen.

Party Reform is a new comparative study of the politics of party organization. The book provides a novel perspective in party scholarship and develops the concept of'reform'as distinct from evolutionary and incremental processes of party change. As an outcome, reform is captured in deliberate and often very public changes to parties'organizational rules and processes. As a process, it offers a party the opportunity to're-brand'and publicly alter its image, to emphasize certain strategic priorities over others, and to alter relationships of power within the party. Analyzing the last ten years of party reform across a handful of established democracies including Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and Germany, the book examines what motivates political parties to undertake organizational reforms and how they go about this process. Party Reform reveals how parties'perceptions of the social trends in which they operate shape reform agendas, and how this relates to competitive demands and pressures from within the party for organizational change. In addition to the motivations for reform, the book is equally concerned with the process of reform. The book demonstrates that declining party memberships have had a fundamental effect on the way in which political parties'sell'organizational reform: as part of a broader rhetoric of democratization, of re-engagement, and of modernization delivered to diverse audiences - both internal and external to the party. The chapters focus particularly on four key reform initiatives that begin to blur the traditional boundaries of party: the introduction of primaries, the changing meaning of party membership, issues-based online policy development, and community organizing campaigns. Using these cutting-edge developments as primary examples, this book provides a framework for understanding why, and how, reforms occur, and what the consequences might be - in terms of how we think about modern political parties as vehicles for participation and representation. Comparative Politics is a series for researchers, teachers, and students of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.ecprnet.eu. The series is edited by Emilie van Haute, Professor of Political Science, Université libre de Bruxelles; Ferdinand Müller-Rommel, Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Leuphana University; and Susan Scarrow, Chair of the Department of Political Science, University of Houston.

This book describes the administrative system of Bhutan. Divided into two main parts, the first part of the book describes the Bhutanese public administration by examining the various paradigms and ideal types of public administration. Chapters examine the paradigms and ideal types in the field of public administration, and the paradigm concept helps in explaining the dynamics and the interaction of the application of public sector reforms within the context of the ideal types. Based on the historical and recent reforms, the Bhutanese administrative system has been mapped onto the ideal type typology to show hybridity with a mix and layering of characteristics of paradigms. The second part of the book examines the dynamics of implementing and evaluating the Position Classification System (PCS). This part includes chapters which evaluate the PCS and discusses the dynamics of the reform. It synthesizes the findings of the implementation of the PCS and connects it to the broader discussions on public sector reforms. It discusses the trajectory of public sector reform and the points of convergences and divergences within this trajectory.

An in-depth breakdown of the recent wave of Canadian Senate scandals, highlighting the need for abolition. The Senate of Canada was created as a temporary expedient at the time of Confederation, offered as part of the negotiations to bring Canada's original colonial provinces into the new political union in the mid-1860s. Since then, the original provinces with upper houses abolished them. New provinces were created without second chambers to their legislatures. Only the Parliament of Canada remains stuck with its redundant and irrelevant colonial relic, costly to maintain and out of step with the values of a modern democratic country. Today, the Senate of Canada is rocked by ongoing scandal. News of this far-reaching scandal rightly disturbs Canadians, but the real national scandal is the very existence of the Senate itself.

The authors address issues of representation - the move to a proportional electoral system in New Zealand, the unsuccessful attempt to establish a domestic head of state in Australia, and the reform of the British House of Lords - and demonstrate that citizens increasingly want legislative institutions to more closely reflect the societies they serve. To discuss responsiveness, the governance of indigenous communities and their place within the broader society in Canada and New Zealand are examined, as is the role of institutions other than legislatures that are involved in protecting minority rights and responding to various forms of diversity. A separate chapter analyses the basis for and merits of proposals to reform the Canadian House of Commons. In addition, authors review the dynamics of federalism, intergovernmental relations, and other processes of multi-level governance in Canada, the United Kingdom, and South Africa. Public debate about adapting governance processes to changing conditions and citizen values is a necessary condition of successful democracies and there is much to learn from progress and false starts in other parliamentary democracies. Contributors include Jonathan Boston (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand), Paul Chartrand (consultant, Victoria, British Columbia), Stéphane Dion (minister of Intergovernmental Relations, Government of Canada), David Docherty, Mason Durie (Massey University), Robert Hazell (University College London), Christina Murray (University of Cape Town), Cheryl Saunders (University of Melbourne), Leslie Seidle, Jennifer Smith (Dalhousie University), and Lord Wakeham (former chairman of the Royal Commission on House of Lords Reform).